


Sun

by artisturtle



Category: Glee
Genre: F/F, Fluff, Glee Goes Camping, If You Are Soft This May Work For You, Santana Confesses, Santana's Father Is Supportive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-24
Updated: 2020-10-24
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:49:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27177464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/artisturtle/pseuds/artisturtle
Summary: Brittany lets out a giggle and it takes her out of her stupefied state. Her neck is long and her hair is gold gossamer bunched up in a very messy state, straggling locks falling like spiral fireworks tracing the curve of her jaw, and the waking, rising light of day frames the curve of her face.It disarms her and it makes her feel.
Relationships: Finn Hudson/Rachel Berry (Mentioned), Kurt Hummel/Blaine Anderson (mentioned), Quinn Fabray/Sam Evans (Mentioned), Santana Lopez/Brittany S. Pierce, Santana Lopez/Santana's Father (Mentioned)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 33





	Sun

**Author's Note:**

> Hi all. I have written another piece for you to read again. Don't worry, I can assure you all other stories in progress are on track. Sometimes, the idea just comes to me, you know? And I prefer writing short stories about it because it's easier to finish, and you can finish it in one sitting.
> 
> This piece is written mostly for self-indulgence. Also, this is unbeta-ed so all mistakes are mine. It did run through Grammarly, though. Kindly leave a comment or a kudos (if you really liked it) and let me know what you think once you are done reading.
> 
> The title is taken from one of the songs from Atlas I by Sleeping At Last. You can listen to it while reading. That'll be cool.

**_For Naya, whose colors shine_ **  
**_so much brighter than the Sun_ **  
**_shining at full brightness_ **

* * *

She's fucking freezing.

The cold wind blows through the large swathe of well-trimmed grass, whistling slightly as it tears through the darkened woodland. In the darkening twilight, she could still see Kurt, Tina, and Mercedes struggling to keep their shared tents upright even though Blaine is doing the majority of the work.

She inches closer to the fire, wanting to keep warm and she tries blowing on her closed palm. To her surprise, Quinn and Sam are making actual food over the fire pit -- barbecue and roasted potatoes over the campfire.

As much as she finds the two blondes to be a very sickeningly-sweet pair, the two will be keeping them well-fed for the evening so she doesn't say a thing.

She sits on a log close to the fire, and her body starts to feel warmer than it had before. She squints her eyes at the darkness, watching as Rachel and Finn manage to put their tent in place.

She rubs her palms together, mentally cursing Finn as she tries to stomp her way towards the fire pit in the middle of their campsite. That idiot had told her the day before they left that it'll be cold but he never told her **_it's this fucking cold._ **

It had been Finn who told her that the New Directions should camp out in the woods to build stronger bonds. She's pretty sure it's that five-foot midget who drilled the idea into his head, but she doesn't say a thing because she’s trying to turn a leaf or something. Brittany had squealed in delight when Finn had invited them, and she bites her tongue even though she thinks a night with her fellow glee club members could only turn into a disaster. When Brittany gives her a pleading look, she finds herself agreeing to go.

"Quinn's made hot chocolate for everyone."

A steaming cup is being held up in front of her and she inhales warm cocoa. The warmth nuzzles its way into her insides and she gladly accepts the steaming cup. On the other side of the cup, the blonde girl with blue eyes like the sky on a summer day beams a winning smile.

"Thanks, Britt. I think I needed this," she says as Brittany sits next to her on the log. The chocolate drink almost sloshes when Brittany curls up to her.

"I know you get cold easy," Brittany tells her and the blonde's thoughtfulness doesn't fail to bring out a smile creeping up her face.

She takes a sip of the hot drink before setting the metal cup down on the log on the other side of her. Brittany automatically entwines their hands together, rubbing them and keeping it warm.

Her heart immediately races.

She doesn't know the exact moment when Brittany stopped being **_just her best friend_** and started to become **_something more._ ** The entirety of the feeling has just escaped her, caught her blindly and now she's here, grappling with her feelings and wondering if Brittany's innocent touches could mean anything more than just friendship.

She just doesn't want to assume.

_"You know mija, when you assume, it only makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me". I don't want to build your hopes up about ending up with Brittany, but unless you'd outright ask her about it, I don't think you'd ever know."_

Her father had told her a couple of weeks ago when she had come out to him one night, telling him the truth about what she felt for her best friend and just laying everything on the table. There were tears involved, but she'd rather not want to speak about it.

As she relishes in the warmth of Brittany's hand in hers, she couldn't help but think of how her father's advice had fallen on deaf ears.

"Rachel wants to play cards," Brittany says.

She doesn't really want to play cards with Berry. She doesn't even want to be here in the first place, but Brittany had wanted to come.

"Puck brought booze," Brittany tells her and her ears perk up at the mention of alcohol.

"At least tonight doesn't have to be so boring with Grandma Berry and her cards," she snorts, watching as Rachel rounds up the members of the New Directions like a mini-dictator. She marches them down the turf, towards the folding table Finn has set up on the opposite side of their log bench.

Quinn yells for them to eat up first and they had some hot soup Sam had whipped up at the last minute to go with their barbecue. She doesn't mention it, but Quinn really cooks well. Forty-five minutes later, she's squeezed with Brittany's leg on both of her sides and Mercedes' back in front of her, watching as the others play some sort of a game with the cards. She, Brittany, Quinn, and Mercedes had run out of their cards so they all just settle to watch as their friends make a fool out of themselves.

"Do you still feel cold?" Brittany asks her out of the blue. She could feel the blonde's breath ghosting her hair.

"Not anymore," she replies.

It happens the first time when Rachel turns to yell at Puckerman for cheating. The otherwise starless sky is lit up with an eerie purple light. They try to ignore it. Almost seven minutes later, the unmistakable groan of thunder reverberates across the woodland.

"You guys, I think there's a thundercloud ahead," Mike says worriedly from his spot across the table. His eyes are trying to squint through the darkness, and he cranes his neck as far as he could just to get a clearer view of the stormcloud ahead of them.

"It looks like it's about to rain," Puck mutters as he tries to sneak a few of his cards into Kurt's pile.

"Hey, stop cheating!" Kurt exclaims with a shrill voice, only to be drowned out by another rumble of thunder.

A series of flashes fill the sky -- many are purple, some are hot-white. Thunder follows, hot on the lightning's tails whenever the sky lights up in mere seconds.

"I don't think it'll rain," Finn shrugs noncommittally, his attention still on the cards and holding up his last card with his left hand. He just took Tina's last card and paired it with one of his two cards. His face breaks into a wide grin.

"Whose turn is it?" Rachel clears her throat.

"Mine," Sam says as he takes Finn's last card, flipping to see it and his large mouth widens into a smile as he hands out one of his cards to Puck. "I've got a pair. It's just the three of you now, Rachel."

"I hate this game," Puck says, holding up his cards, who just got the addition of Sam's last card. "I don't understand it."

"Me too," Kurt pipes up, earning a glare from Rachel.

Before Rachel could retaliate to both’s underhanded attack, there's a bolt of particularly bright lightning followed by a particularly loud boom of thunder. And then, it happens. Like a signal, the entire belly of the sky opens above them.

"Fuck!"

"Ugh!"

"Sweet baby Jesus!

"What the hell?!"

"Where's my phone?! I can't find my phone!" Quinn's voice screeches above all of the chaos.

She's up on her feet in an instant, pulling Brittany with her and making their mad dash towards their tent. Her freezing hands tear the zipper open, ushering the blonde inside the safety of their tent.

She's suddenly glad that she brought that stupid folding chair that belonged to her older brother because she now has something to put their muddy shoes on and not track dirt and mud on the tent floor.

"I'm soaked," she tells Brittany. "We should get changed to drier clothes," she adds as she rummages through her backpack for fresh clothes.

Brittany modestly turns to give her a bit of privacy as she changes. When she's done, she does the same for her. They wiggle into their sleeping bags, lying side by side, the outside of their tent occasionally being lit by the lightning flashes. The wind howls across the camping area, the wind battering through the tarp sheet that served as their wall.

She's too caught up in cursing Finn for bringing them here that she _almost_ misses the sniffle that comes from Brittany.

"Are you crying?" she asks, the inside of the tent momentarily illuminated by lightning. Just as quickly as the light came, it disappears.

"No," Brittany says at her, back turned from her direction. Another sniffle announces itself. "What makes you think that?"

She shrugs. "You were sniffling," she tells the blonde. "I thought you're crying because you're scared."

"Oh," Brittany says. "I'm not crying. I'm about to--"

A sneeze pierces their relatively quiet bubble inside the tent.

"Sorry," Brittany’s voice comes sheepishly and she can almost see the shy, sheepish smile that goes along with it. 

She casually shrugs it off and Brittany burrows closer into her, trying to get them warm. They stay in relative silence, breathing in the tarp-smelling air and listening to the fat droplets of rain falling over their tent. She hears Brittany turn to face her.

"Are you cold?" Brittany asks. She turns her phone flashlight on, bathing them in an eerie white glow from the device. In the faint glow of the light, she could see Brittany smiling peacefully, half-lidded eyes a telltale sign that sleep is creeping up to her.

She looks up to the blue-eyed blonde as she shakes her head. "Not really. This tent feels stuffy at best."

"I just hope rainwater won't seep in," Brittany says worriedly.

She's not so sold on that. With the rate of how heavy the rain is falling and how it's not showing signs of letting up, it's more likely that the ground beneath their tent would be seeped in. She's even certain that there'd be condensation tomorrow morning.

"Yeah. I hope so too," she finally says, her eyes growing heavy. "We should get some sleep."

She wakes up to the feeling of wetness underneath her. Water is seeping into the soil underneath the tent. She lets out a groan. The rain is fairly lighter than earlier, but it’s still falling from the skies. She checks the watch on her arm. It's four in the morning.

She flips her phone on so she could check around if water has gotten in. She feels her way around the tent’s tub, making sure to check corners and seams since those are the most likely places where water would seep in. She checks the tarp walls, grimacing as she notices the moisture that's gathering. The ground beneath the tent is soaked, too.

It's then that she notices Brittany shivering underneath the layers.

She doesn't think, and the act becomes automatic. She opens the zipper to her bag, slipping out of it with as little noise as humanly possible. Then, she drapes the sleeping bag over Brittany's shivering shoulders, trying to put the sleeping bag around the sleeping blonde without waking her up. 

The rain had finally stopped.

She slips into her shoes and crawls out of the tent, making her way to the table, her shoes sloshing through mud and water. With her phone flashlight, she rummages through the haphazard state of the table. The cards are all wet and ruined, but Puck had conveniently left the bottle of rum he had sneaked out from the 7-11 the day before.

She reaches for the bottle, at least the bottle is still capped and rainwater hasn't gotten in. She twists the cap open, grimacing as she gets a waft from the bottle contents. Holding her breath, she downs a gulp from the cheap drink. She could feel the warmth blossom inside her gut, running across her chest and onto her neck. She attempts to clear her throat as quietly as possible when the liquid burns down her throat.

Thanks to the drink, she's feeling fairly warmer now. She slowly ambles back to the tent, slightly freezing with burning in her chest.

The ground underneath them is wet and chilled, making her shiver jerkily. She burrows her feet into the layers that cover Brittany, hoping to keep at least a bit of heat into her body. She watches the ceiling of their tent, trying to think of comforting things so that she could dissociate herself from the harrowing cold. She squats on her side of the tent, unable to go back to sleep. She checks her phone. It's almost five in the morning and she wonders what the hell she’s going to do at five in the morning. 

She decides to go on a run, hoping to stave off the cold by keeping her body moving. So, she slips into her shoes and decides to go laps around the camping grounds. On her second lap around the campground, she sees Quinn stumbling out of the tent she shared with her boyfriend. Quinn greets her with garbled ‘good morning’ before trying to survey the wreck the rain had left.

When she’s done with her third lap, she sees Quinn and Sam sleepily making breakfast for everyone. Matt is tending a fire in the firepit, and Puck is snoring on his spot on the table. Rachel, on the other hand, is uncharacteristically dozing with her hand tucked under her chin.

“How are you even awake and running, Satan?” Mercedes ambles towards them and she drops next to Puck. “Even Grandma Berry here is dozing a bit!”

“I got cold,” she glumly tells them and she swipes a cup of coffee that Quinn had dutifully put in front of her. She’s still winded and dizzy from the running and the alcohol, but at least she had kept warm through the early hours of the morning. “I just kept running so my body kept moving and it kept generating heat. It’s Survival 101, Wheezy.”

Mercedes’ attention is being taken away when Sam slides a plate full of bacon in front of them. Puckerman becomes instantly awake as if he’s being jolted. Minutes later, Finn and Mike stumble out of their respective tents and they pile onto one end of the table. Tina follows not long after, with Blaine and Kurt trailing behind.

“Lurch,” she glowers in dismay at Finn, who just nods sleepily and helps himself to a strip of meat. Sam slides another plate to accommodate the others, and she decides to have a bite. Quinn sidles next to her, not-so-subtly gesturing towards their tent to wake Brittany up.

She takes a final bite before heading out towards their tent. The sun has just started to rise above the crests of the mountains, painting the mountainsides with golden light and chasing away the fog. Her shoes slosh the sticky mud, and she tries not to mess up while she takes them off before getting into the tent.

The sleeping blonde shifts a little and she tries to accommodate the blonde by giving her more stretching room. Her hand shoots out of her sleeping bag and she spies a sliver of creamy skin as Brittany’s shirt hikes up a little bit. Light floods into the tent and she scrambles to try and block the light out from pouring into Brittany’s face. Brittany rolls in her sleeping bag, sighing contentedly and she goes back to sleep. She hesitates to wake the blonde up, not sure if it’s worth waking Brittany up when she **_looks this contented_** _._

She decides she’ll hang out for a little while.

She faintly hears Quinn rounding up the others and telling them to go easy on the food because some are not up yet, and she remembers that Quinn has specifically asked her to wake Brittany up. So, she lets out an annoyed groan at her friend as she turns to shake the sleeping blonde beside her.

“Hey,” she whispers at Brittany and she literally feels her poor heart jump to her throat.

Brittany is still slightly snoring off, her eyes hanging slightly open and there’s a little trickle of drool on the side of her cheek. It’s normally an unattractive sight, maybe borderline gross but with Brittany, she had never seen a creature this beautiful. There has never been a creature as remarkable and as wondrous as Brittany.

Her words run out when Brittany cracks open an eye. “Wha--?” Brittany whispers groggily, her voice thick and scratchy with sleep.

She’s still sitting shell-shocked in front of Brittany like a dumb idiot when the blonde gives her a sheepish smile. Brittany wipes the drool on her face with the back of her alabaster hand and she thinks maybe she too, is drooling.

“Hey San, thanks for waking me up.”

Brittany’s voice sure did kick the gears of her mind into action again, but then the way Brittany is looking at her and smiling at her just _disarms_ her. Brittany gives her _that smile_ , the one that’s exactly reserved for her and on the times when they are alone.

Brittany lets out a giggle and it takes her out of her stupefied state. Her neck is long and her hair is gold gossamer bunched up in a very messy state, straggling locks falling like spiral fireworks tracing the curve of her jaw, and the waking, rising light of day frames the curve of her face.

It disarms her and it makes her _feel._

“San, you’re looking at me like that again.”

Her heartbeat races again, but it’s not in a good, weightless way anymore and it’s more of like an anxious, dreading feeling -- like a weight pulling her heart into a deep pit or a robber trying to get out after being caught.

“Looking at you like what?”

Brittany shrugs. “I don’t know...like I’m special or something.”

She scoffs. “Of course you are special,” she tries to reason out, tries to get out of a situation, and salvage everything before stuff goes down south and before shit hits the fan. “You are like my...”

**_“...unless you'd outright ask her about it, I don't think you'd ever know."_ **

Maybe it’s the glint of hope she’s seen in the blonde’s blue eyes as the first light of morning cradles it, maybe it’s her father’s voice inside her head, or maybe it’s the remnants of the alcohol in her system, but she’s feeling particularly brave and courageous as of the moment so she takes Brittany’s hand in hers and holds it between her crossed legs and she holds her breath.

“Britt, I know this might be really, really weird and out of the blue and maybe you will hate me and not talk to me after all of what I’m about to say but I can’t just go on and keep pretending that I don’t but--”

“What is it?” Brittany asks, her tone patient. Gone is the sleep from her voice, now replaced by that penchant in her tone that is distinctly reserved for her and her alone. The blonde squeezes their hands together.

She shakes her head. She can’t stop now, not when she’s now running out of steam.

“...what I know is I like you. Not the way I like the other boys in school, because those stupid boys don’t really matter and I just want you. I want to be with you. I don’t know when I had started having these feelings for you, but I want to let you know that I like you and I can totally understand that you will just want to be friends and I can totally respect that but being so close to you and not be able to hold you like that just aches so much and I cannot--”

Brittany brings their hands together and she’s cut off mid-sentence when the blonde lightly grazes her lips on the knuckles of their clasped hands. She suddenly feels so stupid for telling and laying everything in front of them in this dirt-smelling tent and she could feel her walls building up and she feels the incessant need to bolt out of the tent and start running away for the hills but then Brittany is pulling her close.

“Okay,” Brittany simply says.

“I--” she does a double-take because she thinks Brittany had misheard and there’s no way she’s shitting bricks trying to tell Brittany what she _actually feels_ about them and all she gets as a reply is as simple and as an ‘okay’.

Small laughter falls off of Brittany’s mouth. “Okay, let’s try again,” she says almost playfully. “I know, Santana. I’ve known, like...for ages,” she rolls her blue eyes at her.

A heartbeat skips. Brittany bites her bottom lip as she toys with their tangled hands. “I was just waiting for you to wrap your head around it.”

She’s not sure how long she’s been sitting there, dumbfounded and dumbed like an idiot but she faintly hears Brittany trying to swallow down her laughter, and the sunlight dances on her quaking shoulders. She can only see the shadows of mountains beyond them and the sun is shining against the great blue sky, but when she’s sitting so close to her she falls in love with Brittany all over again.

“Okay,” Brittany finally says. “Why don’t we try this? Will it be okay if I kiss you?

She must have nodded because Brittany is then leaning towards her, never letting go of her hand and she tastes tangy salt and Brittany’s breath still smells faintly of strawberry chapstick and Maybelline lip balm. She closes her eyes and she feels sweetness flood into her lungs.

So maybe their first kiss is inside a mud-smelling tent, but it’s nothing short of **Perfect**.

Maybe it lasted a mere three seconds because Quinn Fucking Fabray is calling for them outside and yelling for them to explain what’s taking them so goddamn long, **but it is Everything**.

When she opens her eyes, Brittany’s eyes are closed. She watches as Brittany involuntarily lets out a breath through her nose. She clasps her hands around Brittany’s tighter and she leans her forehead to touch Brittany’s.

“Hey,” she whispers at the blonde girl.

“Hey back,” Brittany smiles at her, dreamily opening her blue eyes.

**_When their eyes meet again, a Universe begins._ **

**(#)**

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading this. Again, if you like/hate this piece, leave a comment and let me know. If you'd love to see more fluff and soft stories like this, let me know in the comments section as well.
> 
> Peace and Light my friends. Much love from here. x


End file.
